Retiring early

Taking early retirement, and why it can make sense to quit while you’re ahead.

The UK state pension age is currently 65 for men, while for women the state pension age has increased gradually since 2010 and by 2018 will be the same as the men and also be 65. After that, the state pension ages for both men and women are set to increase further, in tandem, and it is confidently predicted that we will all be working until we are 70 within ten or so years.

So perhaps it’s a strange time to be talking about retiring early. But in fact there remain many good reasons to consider doing so, if you can afford to do that. You may, for example, own a successful business. The most tax-efficient way for you to extract your equity may be to leave in ‘baby steps’, taking cash out according to a schedule and at the same time, little by little, handing over to the new generation. Or you may simply no longer have the desire to work at what you’ve been doing over the years and be looking for a new challenge. And if you have the financial resources to do so, why shouldn’t you?

We can help you decide if you really are in that enviable position. You would almost certainly need to be mortgage and debt free and be confident that you will never have to work again. On the other hand, you may choose to work on occasions, even if you don’t need to. Many independent professionals prefer to slip gradually into retirement, taking more flexible contracts. Our job at Logic Wealth Planning is to help you create such targets and help you to accumulate a sufficient amount of unencumbered, free to invest, wealth.